Dosing of sugar icing on bakery products

Sug­ar icing is the “icing on the cake” of many baked goods. The dos­ing is usu­al­ly done by hand in com­plex pro­duc­tion steps. Most today’s gin­ger­bread dec­o­ra­tions, for exam­ple, are still made man­u­al­ly with the pip­ing bag. But the degree of automa­tion is also being increased in the baked goods indus­try. There are sev­er­al rea­sons for this: Stricter hygien­ic reg­u­la­tions or high per­son­nel costs, for example.

With the end­less pis­ton tech­nol­o­gy on which the dis­pensers and dos­ing pumps from Vis­cotec are based, dec­o­ra­tion tasks or fill­ing in the con­fec­tionery indus­try can be car­ried out semi-auto­mat­i­cal­ly and ful­ly automated.

Biscuit labelling 2.0

Automa­tion in the con­fec­tionery indus­try or in the pro­duc­tion of baked goods can­not be com­pared with automa­tion options in oth­er indus­tries such as the auto­mo­tive indus­try. Instead of a stan­dard­ized com­po­nent with defined man­u­fac­tur­ing tol­er­ances, the “liv­ing prod­uct” is worked on here. As no two baked goods blanks are the same, this type of appli­ca­tion requires advanced cam­era tech­nol­o­gy. In order to then be able to react in real time to devi­a­tions in the mould­ed part, flex­i­bly adjustable dos­ing tech­nol­o­gy is required. With Vis­coTec dos­ing tech­nol­o­gy, the nec­es­sary para­me­ters such as dis­charge quan­ti­ty, speed etc. can be adjust­ed at any time and anal­o­gous­ly dur­ing the dos­ing process.

The pro­gres­sive cav­i­ty pump offers excel­lent pos­si­bil­i­ties espe­cial­ly for high­ly vis­cous or dif­fi­cult foods such as icing sug­ar. Thanks to its sim­ple han­dling, the dos­ing pump can be used in automa­tion solu­tions and inte­grat­ed into all com­mon robot systems.

Automatic cake decoration

A typ­i­cal appli­ca­tion is the ful­ly auto­mat­ed dec­o­ra­tion of bis­cuits, pas­tries and small cakes with sug­ar icing. A Vis­cotec VHD dis­penser has been inte­grat­ed into a Varo plant, a machine and plant man­u­fac­tur­er for pro­duc­tion plants in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal, food and non-food sec­tors in Den­mark. The food robot auto­mat­i­cal­ly dec­o­rates var­i­ous bak­ery prod­ucts. The result is an effi­cient, con­tin­u­ous and flex­i­ble pas­try decoration.

The robot can dose dif­fer­ent pat­terns, even free­hand draw­ings. Spe­cial­ly devel­oped robot soft­ware con­verts the sketch­es into robot paths. In con­junc­tion with a cam­era sys­tem, the dos­ing sys­tem auto­mat­i­cal­ly rec­og­nizes which piece is next in line and which pat­tern is to be exe­cut­ed on it. The Varo sys­tem can apply dif­fer­ent dec­o­ra­tive pat­terns — both hot and cold — in the same process. It con­vinces with its absolute ease of oper­a­tion. And it is com­pat­i­ble with all types of pumpable dec­o­ra­tions such as glazes or choco­late and fruit sauces.

Regard­less of the actu­al dosage, the prod­uct feed of the some­times high­ly vis­cous mass­es is still a chal­lenge in advance. Work­ing with an ordi­nary pres­sure ves­sel as prod­uct sup­ply can lead to air pock­ets in the mate­r­i­al to be dosed due to uneven fill­ing and thus to inter­rup­tions in the dos­ing flow. This in turn has unde­sir­able effects on the over­all result of the dec­o­ra­tion. Vis­coTec drum emp­ty­ing sys­tems ensure unin­ter­rupt­ed and con­stant prod­uct removal — and thus seam­less pro­duc­tion. The prod­uct feed of the high­ly vis­cous sug­ar icing is there­fore also car­ried out in the appli­ca­tion exam­ple by drum emp­ty­ing sys­tems, which are also based on a pro­gres­sive cav­i­ty pump. Togeth­er with a fol­low­er plate, this pump emp­ties the bar­rel almost residue-free in a very gen­tle process. Emp­ty­ing is there­fore main­ly achieved by the suc­tion effect of the pro­gres­sive cav­i­ty pump and not by apply­ing high pres­sures to the fol­low­er plate and the result­ing shear and pres­sure stress on the sug­ar icing (as is the case with pis­ton pumps, for exam­ple). Due to the gen­tle con­vey­ing, the sug­ar icing can be fed to the dos­ing pump with­out chang­ing its prop­er­ties. Sub­se­quent­ly, the sug­ar icing is dosed onto the bis­cuits and can be applied to the bis­cuits in any form, with any pat­tern or writ­ing in com­bi­na­tion with the robot­ics and soft­ware. There are no lim­its to cre­ative design and imag­i­na­tion here: For exam­ple, sea­son­al dec­o­ra­tions such as Christ­mas pat­terns on gin­ger­bread or even motifs for East­er, as well as clas­sic cake dec­o­ra­tions can be real­ized with com­plete­ly new motifs and even with the most dif­fi­cult fonts or lines. This auto­mat­ed dec­o­ra­tion offers large bak­eries and con­fec­tionery man­u­fac­tur­ers com­plete­ly new pos­si­bil­i­ties and oppor­tu­ni­ties to auto­mate their pro­duc­tion and design it with process reli­a­bil­i­ty in order to guar­an­tee uni­form qual­i­ty and prod­uct stan­dards. A con­sid­er­able sav­ings poten­tial for today’s often still very labour-inten­sive activities.

“A key to suc­cess is knowl­edge about the icing and the con­trol of it. When using a Vis­cotec pump we do not only get the pre­cise con­trol of the flow but also a sys­tem that is durable and easy to clean. Our direct col­lab­o­ra­tion with Vis­cotec ensures the best solu­tion for any case,” says Arne Lund­fold Bjer­ring, Head of Engi­neer­ing at Varo.

Perfect filling results

Anoth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty in which pro­gres­sive cav­i­ty pumps are used in a com­plete­ly new envi­ron­ment is fill­ing appli­ca­tions in the con­fec­tionery sec­tor: Where sim­ple pis­ton meter­ing sys­tems are still reach­ing their lim­its (e.g. due to too high vis­cos­i­ty), the appli­ca­tions are imple­ment­ed either at extreme tech­ni­cal, and thus also cost-inten­sive expense. Here, the pro­gres­sive cav­i­ty pump can be used as a dos­ing or fill­ing pump. Dif­fi­cult and high­ly vis­cous media, such as hon­ey mix­tures, can be dosed and filled with­out prob­lems. In addi­tion, con­fec­tionery man­u­fac­tur­ers have the advan­tage that com­plete­ly new prod­ucts and blends can be devel­oped and final­ly pro­duced, because in the past the tech­ni­cal pos­si­bil­i­ties were sim­ply lacking.

The high­ly vis­cous liq­uids, such as pastes or creams, are dosed extreme­ly gen­tly and their struc­ture is not changed. Here too, chunky mix­tures, e.g. fruit pieces or small bis­cuit pieces, can be pumped effort­less­ly. Depend­ing on the appli­ca­tion, the dos­ing pumps can be mount­ed direct­ly on a ful­ly auto­mat­ed fill­ing sta­tion or, for exam­ple, in a sta­tion­ary or semi-auto­mat­ic system.

Dec­o­ra­tion as well as fill­ing appli­ca­tions are com­par­a­tive­ly new areas of appli­ca­tion for pro­gres­sive cav­i­ty pumps in the food indus­try, enabling users to auto­mate and com­plete­ly restruc­ture processes.